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WASHINGTON – Justice Stephen Breyer was robbed last week by a machete-wielding intruder at his vacation home in the West Indies, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said Monday. The 73-year-old Breyer, wife Joanna and guests were confronted by the robber around 9 p.m. EST Thursday in the home Breyer owns on the Caribbean island of Nevis, spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said. The intruder took about $1,000 in cash and no one was hurt, Arberg said.

Partially lifting the veil that usually guards their actions, two Supreme Court justices on Wednesday painted the court as a bulwark for the Constitution and said some of today’s cynicism about government stems from the public’s scanty understanding of the founding document. One of the two, Justice Antonin Scalia, said there are too many federal judges and they are too heavily taken from the ranks of lawyers, which he said has watered down the quality of judges. He and Justice Stephen G. Breyer appeared before the SenateJudiciary Committee in an unusual hearing. The branches of government usually strive to keep...

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has broken his right collarbone in a bicycle accident near his home in Cambridge, Mass. Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said the 72-year-old justice took a spill over the weekend. The mishap was not preventing Breyer from speaking in New York City Tuesday evening. Breyer was not in court Tuesday morning, but Arberg said the absence was unrelated to the accident. In 1993, Breyer suffered more serious injuries, a punctured lung and broken ribs, when he was hit by a car while riding his bike across Harvard Square.

A few days ago, Pastors Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp were thrown in jail for refusing to pay a $1.00 bond ordered by a Michigan judge who upheld a jury verdict that they would "likely breach the peace" if they were allowed to carry out a planned protest at a mosque. The judge appeared unfazed by the fact that the ruling was both a violation of the Court's Brandenburg test (which prohibits political advocacy only "where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action"), and that it amounted...

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is an ideologue, a judicial activist who rules by his own political and personal philosophy, rather than the rule of law and what our founding fathers intended when they wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights more than 200 years ago. The left-leaning justice recently made remarks that further the suspicion that has been held for years - he doesn’t rule in regard to the Constitution, but rather a far-left political philosophy. On Sunday, Breyer, a Bill Clinton appointee, said the founding fathers never intended guns to go unregulated. Breyer said history stands with the...

It’s not just the Constitution that is a “living document,” as Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer proved yesterday when discussing the Second Amendment. Breyer argued that James Madison only included the right to bear arms reluctantly, and only because the states wouldn’t sign the Constitution for fear of creating an overmighty central government. That’s why he voted against the majority in the Heller decision that overturned the federal handgun ban in Washington DC: Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Breyer said history stands with the dissenters in the court’s decision to overturn a Washington, D.C., handgun ban in the 2008 case...

It’s not just the Constitution that is a “living document,� as Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer proved yesterday when discussing the Second Amendment.  Breyer argued that James Madison only included the right to bear arms reluctantly, and only because the states wouldn’t sign the Constitution for fear of creating an overmighty central government.  That’s why he voted against the majority in theHeller decision that overturned the federal handgun ban in Washington DC: Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,� Breyer said history stands with the dissenters in the court’s decision to overturn a Washington, D.C., handgun ban in the 2008 case “D.C. v. Heller.�Breyer...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Don't expect a Facebook friend request from Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer any time soon. The 72-year-old justice said in a speech at Vanderbilt Law School on Tuesday that he was perplexed when he recently saw the film "The Social Network" about the origins of Facebook. But Breyer said the film illustrates his argument that modern conditions — like the development of the social-networking site — should inform justices when interpreting a Constitution written in the 18th century. "If I'm applying the First Amendment, I have to apply it to a world where there's an Internet, and...

LUBBOCK, Texas -- One of the most conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court and one of the most liberal ones sparred Friday over capital punishment, the direct election of senators and various other constitutional questions during a rare public debate that highlighted their philosophical differences. Antonin Scalia, 74, the longest-serving current justice, appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan, and Stephen Breyer, 72, appointed by Democrat Bill Clinton, shared the stage in front of a crowd of thousands during a West Texas event organized by Texas Tech University Law School. They particularly clashed on the question of capital punishment. Scalia...

Alive or dead? Today, the 213th anniversary of the United States Constitution, that question looms large. This is especially so as the document is wielded like a sword, cleaving libertarian from progressive philosophies. Understanding the nature of the Constitution — neither underestimating its genius nor overstating its authority as inerrant — is critical. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once said, “The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living, but dead.” That view has been embraced by many in the tea party movement. These opponents of President Barack Obama’s agend, who thrust the federal government into many areas of...

A Florida pastor who canceled plans for his congregation to burn Qurans on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks had the right to follow through with his intentions, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said Wednesday. In an interview Wednesday on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” the associate justice compared the act of burning Islam’s holy book to setting the American on flag on fire when asked whether the Rev. Terry Jones had the right to carry out the controversial plan. “We protect expression that we hate,” he said. “When you have a country of 300 million different people who think...

In 1935 Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can’t Happen Here, a novel about the rise of tyranny in America, whose message was that it indeed can happen here. Just to remind us that in fact it “can happen here”, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer used the occasion of his appearance on noted legal forum, Good Morning America, to suggest that there may not be any First Amendment protection for burning the Koran. “Holmes said it doesn’t mean you can shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater,” Breyer told me. “Well, what is it? Why? Because people will be trampled to death. And...

You can't burn a Koran in a crowded theater, and Supreme CourtJustice Stephen Breyer suggests that to placate foreign extremists, Koran burning might be banned everywhere else in America too. In an interview aired Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America,"Justice Breyer, who is on tour promoting his new book, averred that in the Internet age, speech traditionally protected by the First Amendment may have to be weighed against its global impact. George Stephanopoulos asked the justice about the canceled Sept. 11 Koran burning proposed by Pastor Terry Jones, and whether the fact that people riot in Afghanistan over what happens...

I’m not sure which is more unsettling — the fact that a Supreme Court justice can get the First Amendment so wrong, or that it is so unclear that George Stephanopoulos thought to ask the question. Until now, I perhaps naïvely thought that everyone understood that the provocateurial pastor in Florida had the right to burn Korans, or any other book he legitimately owned, but that it was a really bad idea for many reasons, most of which Allahpundit argued in his excellent posts on the subject. Silly me: Last week we saw a Florida Pastor – with 30 members...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has expressed a willingness to ban protesters from burning the Koran as the modern day equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater.The Supreme Court has ruled burning the American flag in protest is protected speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution.Breyer spoke to George Stephanopoulos on ABC's Good Morning America today:But Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told me on "GMA" that he's not prepared to conclude that -- in the internet age -- the First Amendment condones Koran burning.“Holmes said it doesn’t mean you can shout 'fire' in a crowded theater,” Breyer...

Today's Mad Lib of the Day is Justice Stephen Breyer, a guy who has written things like this in McDonald vs. City of Chicago: In sum, the Framers did not write the Second Amendment in order to protect a private right of armed self-defense. There has been, and is, no consensus that the right is, or was, “fundamental.” No broader constitutional interest or principle supports legal treatment of that right as fundamental. To the contrary, broader constitutional concerns of an institutional nature argue strongly against that treatment. Breyer now seems to equate burning the Koran with shouting fire in a...

Legal challenges to the national health care overhaul signed last month by President Barack Obama will be heard eventually by the U.S. Supreme Court, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer predicted Thursday.

Breaking on CNBC: USSC delays Chyrsler asset sale! Mourdock: USe of Tarp Funds in automotive industry was illegal Obama admin had urged USSC NOT to keep chrysler deal on hold

A top advisor to Barack Obama says, if elected president, the Democratic candidate will look to appoint Supreme Court justices in the mold of Justices Stephen Breyer and David Souter. “Of course, he’s interested in people of integrity and competence, that’s a given,” Pepperdine University law professor Doug Kmiec told CNSNews.com. “He’s also indicated that he’s most attracted to the kind of justice represented by Justice Breyer and Justice Souter.” Kmiec, who supports Obama and has been serving as a campaign “surrogate” for the Illinois Democratic senator, said Obama admires the qualities Souter and Breyer represent. “These justices are individuals...

The president of a conservative Catholic group says his organization is protesting New York's Fordham University for giving an award to Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. The award is the 2008 Fordham-Stein Ethics Prize and is given to an individual who has been at the top of his or her career in promoting legal ethics. However, Patrick Riley, president of The Cardinal Newman Society, says the problem with honoring Justice Breyer with the award is that he is pro-choice -- and Fordham University is a Catholic school. "We have a serious concern about this, especially at a Catholic university, when...

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in New York is among those criticizing Fordham University for giving an award to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, a supporter of abortion rights.A spokesman for the New York Archdiocese said Cardinal Edward Egan was surprised to learn Breyer would receive an award from Fordham's law school and has spoken to the Catholic university's leaders to ensure "that a mistake of this sort will not happen again."Spokesman Joseph Zwilling said Monday that Egan was talking about Breyer's votes on the Court in favor of abortion rights.The protest against Breyer is being led...

Group also whitewashed MoveOn.org hate speech, published anti-Christian hate video The National Jewish Democratic Council is grasping at straws in its latest effort to smear John McCain. “McCain Picking on Jewish Supreme Court Justices?” (http://njdc.typepad.com/njdcs_blog/2008/08/mccain-picking.html) says, When Pastor Rick Warren asked Senator John McCain to name his least favorite current U.S. Supreme Court justices it seemed that he was picking on the Jewish members of our highest court. A review of the Kelo vs. New London decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that municipalities can collude with private developers to use eminent domain to steal property for private...

WASHINGTON - The nine justices in black robes file into the Supreme Court consumed with thoughts about the great legal issues of the day. Only one of them is likely to ask questions involving raccoons, an unruly son, pet oysters or even the dreaded "tomato children." When Justice Stephen Breyer leans toward his microphone at the end of the bench, lawyers can expect to be asked almost anything. The 69-year-old Breyer is the court's most frequent practitioner of the hypothetical question, a conjurer of images that are unusual and occasionally bizarre. "The last time I was up there arguing, it...

SAN FRANCISCO - The Supreme Court's most recent term was a difficult one, Justice Stephen Breyer said Saturday, because he found himself on the losing end of several key cases. "I was in dissent quite a lot and I wasn't happy," Breyer said at the American Bar Association's annual meeting. Breyer was one of four liberal justices who dissented in cases involving abortion rights, school integration and pay discrimination. In the school case, in which the court struck down student assignment plans in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle, his frustration bubbled over in a lengthy dissent that was twice as long...

The left is astir again. From Slate to the op ed pages of the New York Times and the People for the American Way (PFAW) handouts, it is clear that the left is ginning up to replay their war against any judicial nominee this President may yet propose for any forthcoming vacancy on the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer shook his head. He rolled his eyes. He even grimaced once or twice as he listened to Chief Justice John Roberts read the majority opinion in the school diversity case on Thursday. As the high court ended its term, Breyer showed obvious disappointment with the opinion. For liberal members of the court, it was not the only time this year their emotions surfaced during normally placid readings of the court's opinions.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Here's what Justice Stephen Breyer revealed about the Supreme Court in his appearance on a radio quiz show: His judicial robe gathers no lint because it's synthetic. When it came to cracking wise, Breyer held his own with a panel of people who are paid to be funny on National Public Radio's "Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me." Being the funniest Supreme Court justice, he said, "is like being one of the shortest tall people." On why he even agreed to answer questions outside his area of expertise in the humbling, and often embarrassing, "Not My Job"...

If judicial confirmation hearings in the Senate were one-tenth as illuminating as last night's debate between Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer at the Capitol Hilton, there would be a booming market for Supreme Court action figurines. Co-sponsored by the American Constitution Society and the Federalist Society (the Birkenstocks and bow ties of the legal universe), the debate has Breyer and Scalia whacking their way through the possibility of "justice," the limitations of constitutional history, and, throughout the evening—the possibility of persuasion. The justices agree more than they differ, and they agree about nothing so much as the...

Many conservatives reportedly chose not to vote in November to protest the Republican Party's abandonment of conservative principles. One potential consequence of that boycott could be a forfeiture of the chance to finally secure a majority of "originalist" justices on the Supreme Court. Granted, it was going to be tough enough for President Bush to win confirmation for another conservative nominee to the court in the face of a militant minority should a vacancy occur, but now that the Democrats have control it will be virtually impossible. This is something disgruntled conservatives should contemplate before sitting the next one out....

It’s time to give Justices like Stephen Breyer their just dues by no longer respectively entertaining their legal thesis built solely on ignorance or their hopelessly flawed historical antidotes’. Justice Breyer rhetorically asks James Madison, "James, when you wrote that document, did you have in mind a document that would actually work to produce a democratic society over a period of three or four or five hundred years, or did you want a document of pristine logic that would in fact not last all that long?" Breyer asked. "Did you want it to be workable or not?" Breyer surely have...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three quarters of Americans can correctly identify two of Show White's seven dwarfs while only a quarter can name two Supreme Court Justices, according to a poll on pop culture released on Monday. According to the poll by Zogby International, commissioned by the makers of a new game show on pop culture called "Gold Rush," 57 percent of Americans could identify J.K. Rowling's fictional boy wizard as Harry Potter, while only 50 percent could name the British prime minister, Tony Blair. The pollsters spoke to 1,213 people across the United States. The results had a margin...

Aaron Harber of the Aaron Harber show (harbertv.com) has an interview with Justices Breyer and O’Connor tomorrow afternoon, and he has solicited SCOTUSblog readers to help him formulate some questions for the two Honorable interviewees. So, if you have a query or two about the law or the Court that you think would be appropriate for either of the two Justices, post it as a comment on this post or e-mail jharrow [at] akingump.com by 1:00 PM Eastern Time tomorrow, Thursday, July 6. Hopefully, we can send Aaron a few good questions and he will report back to us with...

<p>LOST LIBERTY HOTEL GETS SECOND WIND--AN AIRPORT Eminent Domain for Hot Air Balloons?</p> <p>"I'm looking for a small town in New Hampshire to make a loud roar against the Kelo decision on its anniversary-June 23rd," stated Logan Darrow Clements.</p> <p>According to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in "Kelo vs. City of New London" a government may use eminent domain to seize homes and land to promote economic development or increase tax revenue. Meanwhile, New Hampshire statute XXXIX chapter 423 allows a town to seize land for an airport outside its border. Since this statute does not require the land to be adjacent territory any town in New Hampshire could seize land inside any other town. Thus any town in New Hampshire could seize David Souter's land in Weare, N.H. or Stephen Breyer's land in Plainfield, N.H. for the creation of an airport.</p>

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer paid a hushed visit to Harvard Law School yesterday, calling Bush v. Gore the “most stressful” case during his 12-year tenure and delivering a short address on the high court’s operations. Breyer’s speech to Climenko Professor of Law Charles J. Ogletree’s criminal law class was kept secret from everyone, including Ogletree’s students, until minutes before it began. After a warm greeting from the first-year students, Breyer, a Law School graduate, delivered a relaxed talk about life as a Supreme Court justice. When asked to choose the most important case of his tenure, Breyer...

NEW YORK - The job of a justice on the nation's highest court is to patrol the boundaries of American society, not to decide what kind of society it should have, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said Tuesday. People are suspicious of what the court does and think it intrudes into what they do, Breyer said. "Democracy has boundaries, or rails," he said during a luncheon at New York Law School. "We are the boundary patrol." The 68-year-old justice noted that the word democracy is not found in the Constitution. But the concept, he said, is there. "When you understand...

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer discussed his judicial philosophy and the role of the Constitution Sunday afternoon during a public discussion with politics professor and constitutional law scholar Robert George. Breyer spoke in an almost-filled McCosh 50, touching on topics such as the importance of political participation, the "tools" that justices utilize to make constitutional rulings and the Supreme Court nominee confirmation process. "The primary goal [of the Constitution] is not to tell people what to do, but for people to decide for themselves what to do through a democratic process," Breyer said. "[The Supreme Court justices] are patrolling the...

Interestingly, Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer said the following: "You want to try a war crime. You want to say this is a war crimes tribunal," Breyer said. "One, this is not a war, at least not an ordinary war. Two, it's not a war crime because that doesn't fall under international law. And three it's not a war crime tribunal or commission because (there is) no emergency." So we are not at war - I wonder what our soldiers would have to say about that.

Three disturbing trends threaten the free speech of all Americans: 1. the attempts by certain liberal judges to have constitutional issues decided by the application of international laws, 2. “hate speech” being redefined as any criticism of a religion or of any characteristic of a group, and 3. the attempts now underway to reinstate what is cunningly called “the Fairness Doctrine”. Supreme Court justices Breyer and Ginsburg, both liberals, have recently given speeches in which they argued for the application of international laws in deciding cases that came before the Supreme Court.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said Tuesday the high court has more discussion and debate behind closed doors with its two new members. Breyer, though, said the court "seems to be running very well" under Chief Justice John Roberts, and he doesn't think the extra discussion is a major change. "Perhaps it has to do with younger people," Breyer, 67, told reporters at a news conference before he was to speak at the Clinton Library. President Bush's first nominee to the court, 51-year-old Roberts, was sworn in last fall, becoming the nation's youngest chief justice in...

CHICAGO - Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer says he frequently makes decisions about a law's constitutionality by considering its purposes and consequences, which puts him at odds with fellow justices who try to adhere strictly to the language of the Constitution. Breyer, on the court since 1994, didn't single out any particular justice or discuss his new colleagues, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, during his speech Tuesday at the University of Chicago Law School. He said, however, that he hadn't detected any split on the high court along Republican and Democratic ideological lines. "I haven't seen that kind of politics...

It ought to be a major intellectual event in constitutional law when a Justice of the Supreme Court comes forward publicly to explain his theory of judging. Explanation is needed, for by now nobody familiar with the work of the Court believes it confines its rulings to the principles of the historic Constitution. There have always been instances when the Court voted its sympathies rather than anything resembling the Constitution, but over the last half century the divergence between the document and the decisions has sharply increased. Indeed, the criticism that the Court routinely departs from the Constitution’s principles, as...

Chloe Breyer serves an Episcopal priest at St. Mary's Manhattanville Church in West Harlem, New York. She is the daughter of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer and author of The Close, a reflection on her first year at General Theological Seminary in New York City. She is urbane, witty, and articulate. What she is not, however, is theologically orthodox -- a point she makes painfully clear in "The Earthly Father--What if Mary Wasn't a Virgin?," published December 22, 2005 at the on-line magazine, Slate. "At Christmas, Christians celebrate the birth of God's only son," Ms. Breyer notes. "Some...

In his book Active Liberty, Justice Stephen Breyer attempts to develop an alternative to the originalist theory of interpretation that has received so much attention in recent years. Rather than interpret the Constitution based on its original meaning, as originalists like Justice Scalia might, Breyer argues that the Constitution should be interpreted to further political participation -- the active liberty of the ancients as opposed to the modern liberty to do as one pleases. Breyer also maintains that the Constitution (and statutes) should be interpreted using a “purposivist” approach -- i.e. that judges should read constitutional provisions based on their...

A curious e-mail is making the rounds from Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy's communications director, Stephanie Cutter, attacking Judge Alito's response last week to the Senate Judiciary Committee's request for more information about Judge Alito's involvement in a case in Vanguard mutual funds was a party in name only. In Monga v. Ottenberg, a bankruptcy receiver sought to have a party's IRA assets (which included funds in a Vanguard account) made available to pay the bankrupt party's creditors. Vanguard was a party to the case because the bankrupt party sued it to prevent it from releasing his IRA funds to his...

In the weeks after the Supreme Court issued its decision in Bush v. Gore, on December 12, 2000, the mood was despondent in the chambers of the Justices on the losing side. The five-to-four ruling ended the recount of the Presidential vote in Florida and assured George W. Bush’s victory in the election. “The clerks were tremendously alienated,” one recalled recently. “A lot of them thought that the Court was a fraud, that the place had sacrificed its legitimacy, and that there really wasn’t much point in taking the whole institution seriously anymore.” Stephen G. Breyer was among the dissenting...

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Thank you for joining us today, Justice Breyer. Tell us why you decided to write this book. JUSTICE STEPHEN BREYER: I wanted to write it because I've learned from really Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice O'Connor, my predecessor Harry Blackmun that there's a tremendous desire for knowledge about the court and how do we actually decide cases? People want to know. It's not the CIA; there's not really a secret. And I wanted to try to help people understand that. And also, I think there's a misconception. I think that many people believe that we're deciding what's good...

<p>That was the vote count when the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmed Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer in the 1990s, and it should have been the vote for John Roberts yesterday, instead of 13-5. The two Bill Clinton appointees are every bit as liberal as Judge Roberts is conservative, and they were just as unforthcoming during their confirmation hearings on how they would vote on specific cases.</p>

GEORG HEGEL was a German philosopher of the early 19th century. Hegel believed that history unfolds through a "dialectical" process, in which each stage is the product of the contradictions inherent in the ideas that defined the preceding one. Within these tensions and contradictions, Hegel believed, the philosopher can discern a comprehensive, evolving, rational unity. He called that unity "the absolute idea." History consists of an inevitable and progressive march to that idea.Until recently it appeared that Marxism (which borrowed Hegel's dialectic but replaced "ideas" with economic systems and classes--hence "dialectical materialism") would represent Hegel's most enduring contribution to the...